Thursday, September 27, 2007

Anti-Americanism

Last night during halftime of a DC United game I was attending I was chatting with a few of my friends about the atmosphere of the stadium, which had at least half the spectators cheering for the other team, and what it would be like to play in that environment. One guy mentioned that when he was in high school that an all star team he was on did a tour of Holland, playing against the youth teams of Ajax, FC Twente and one other pro team. The game against Twente's youth team took place in a stadium that had a few thousand spectators, many of whom were screaming things like "F*** the USA!" at the players. Describing the environment as surreal, my friend said that it really took him aback and he just couldn't believe the level of hatred, wondering what he or anyone else had done to prompt it. (In contrast can anyone imagine people screaming such things against the Netherlands if the game was played in the U.S.?)

A number of people believe that since President Bush took office that the level of anti-Americanism has skyrocketed -- and I have reason to believe it has certainly increased. But let's get something straight: anti-Americanism has long been rife in Europe and other parts of the world. This soccer game my friend mentioned took place while Bill Clinton still occupied the White House.

Today I mentioned this story to my Turkish officemate, who has long maintained that President Bush is single-handedly responsible for much of the anti-U.S. animus currently found abroad. My officemate responded by noting that the U.S. has long been committing acts that have offended the rest of the world so it was unsurprising that such feelings are deep-rooted and predate Bush. As an example he cited the protests that took place in Turkey against U.S. actions during the Vietnam War. I responded by highlighting the fact that few, if any, protests took place against the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan, a fellow Muslim country -- a point he had no response to.

I followed up by noting how anti-U.S. sentiment is particularly pronounced among Muslims even though the U.S. spent most of the last decade conducting military interventions designed to assist Muslims -- Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. I also pointed out how during the early 90s I had a friend from Norway that would bring up in conversation criticisms of the U.S. such as homelessness, drug addition, gun crime, etc. Even if you accept that such allegations are all true, why did he care? Why did he enjoy bringing down the U.S. so much.

At this point my officemate said something insightful, basically that sometimes people from small countries feel the need to bring down the bigger countries. This dovetails with the theory that people just like to see the biggest, most successful person brought down a notch. And as long as anti-U.S. feelings are driven by such pettiness and irrationality I'm not really sure how much we should care what they think.

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